


A Darker Sort of Mind

by AJewelAmong



Category: American McGee's Alice, Psychonauts
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 03:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12099480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJewelAmong/pseuds/AJewelAmong
Summary: The Psychonauts were renowned for their expertise when it came to psyche repairs. They had never been given a case they couldn’t solve.Except for one.Little oneshot inspired by the Psychonauts easter egg in Madness Returns. Rated T for some implied things.





	A Darker Sort of Mind

The Psychonauts were renowned for their expertise when it came to psyche repairs. They had never been given a case they couldn’t solve.

Except for one.

Alice Liddell, now nineteen, had barely escaped a traumatic fire that had killed her entire family when she was only a small child. She had yet to recover, and most experts said she likely never would. Shortly after the group had learned of her condition, a senior agent of the Psychonauts had been sent to assess the damage in her mind, not long after she had been admitted to Rutledge Asylum, but never returned. A second agent was sent in not long afterwards, this time for a small scouting trip, and they returned with reports of monstrous creatures, worse than any the Psychonauts had dealt with before.

Eventually, after many other failed missions into her mind, it was decided that Alice’s case was to be put on hold indefinitely; no agent’s life or sanity was worth risking for a single person’s mental health. All information about the girl was to be kept classified, only for the eyes of full-fledged agents. And under no circumstances was anyone permitted to attempt another mission into her mind.

Razputin Aquato, however, was not just anyone.

As soon as he had stumbled upon the case during some late-night agent reading, he knew he had to look into it more. After checking with Sasha, Milla, and Oleander, just to make sure that the case was, in fact, off-limits…he decided to disregard all warnings and give it a shot. What could go wrong? He had handled a similar kind of case before, and if he could help himself get over his own childhood trauma, what would stop him from being able to help someone else?

He was about to find out.

After managing to locate Alice and secretly set up a psychic door, he entered her mind. Within it, he found an entire realm, made up of different, smaller realms; it was much larger than any mind he had traversed before. However, despite its massive size, he still firmly believed that he could handle it. It was no worse than any case he had done before, he thought. The “monstrous creatures” that had scared countless other agents away would be no match for Raz and his powers, he thought.

And he was right, for the most part. Aside from a few difficult fights and some very unsettling reminders of the things Alice had experienced, it was about the same as any other mission. Until he arrived at the part of Alice’s mind that the residents had called “Queensland”. He carefully navigated his way to the gnarled and twisted castle at the center of the area, and managed to get inside, easily dispatching the palace’s peculiar playing-card guards with a few psy-blasts.

He then wound his way through the eerie structure, still keeping an eye out for enemies, and trying his darnedest to avoid touching the slimy substances that were growing all over the walls and floors. Eventually, he made it to the inner sanctum of the castle, and came face to face with its queen; a monstrous-looking being with slimy red tendrils and horns on her head. Everything about her unnerved Raz; especially her face, which was the most human-looking thing about her. It looked almost exactly like Alice’s, but different somehow. A little off.

Raz skipped the formalities, and went straight to attacking. And the queen responded with full force. Eventually, he found that he was no match for her, and soon ended up flat on the ground, out of breath and falling unconscious.

Expecting to be killed, Raz accepted his fate and prepared to be kicked out of Alice’s mind. But instead, when he next awoke he found himself inside a cell, somewhere deep inside the bowels of the castle. Instead of being executed, he was being held prisoner. Why, he didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Preparing to leave, Raz readied his smelling salts. But just before he was about to eject himself from Alice’s mind, he eyed a pile of bones in the corner of the cell and got an idea. Using his telekinesis, he lifted up the bones and got to work sticking them together, breaking and carving a few here and there, until they were put together like a bony reflection of himself. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he took off his helmet and put it on the skull.

He smiled at his work, then took out the salts once more, and with a _click_ , he was gone.

* * *

 


End file.
